5 Cognate Strategies Used in Business Writing
Abdullah Makhdum
University of the People
5 Cognate Strategies Used in Business Writing
In this paper, I am going to focus on 5 cognate strategies used in business writing. According to McLean, there are 9 cognate strategies developed by Charles Kostelnick and David Rogers in the recent decades – clarity, conciseness, arrangement, credibility, expectation, reference, tone, emphasis, and engagement – and these cognate strategies are ways for promoting understanding. These strategies can either be applied to public speaking or can be counted as a good tool in developing good writing. (2010). Indeed, for a perfect writing, all of the cognate strategies are important to be applied. However from the mentioned 9 cognate strategies, I am choosing to describe 5 strategies which are used in business writing – clarity, conciseness, arrangement, credibility, and expectation.
Clarity; when it comes to business writing, clarity means the quality of being well explained and easy to understand to audience or receiver. Suppose, if the main points of a business writing is according to the standards, words and meanings are correlated and have relevancy, and the message is well explained so this shows the clarity of the writing because the audience can easily understand what is written in it for him/her. (McLean, 2010)
Conciseness; is summary of all necessary information and message in a very short form. In business writing, if the message is concise and required key points are mentioned so it can possibly attract the audience and meet their expectations. (McLean, 2010)
Arrangement; simply means putting the words, and specific information in a proper manner or placement of your message and ideas. As well, arrangement is ordering and organizing business letters in a best way which will help the writing to be effective and on point. (McLean, 2010)
Credibility; is quality of being believable or trust worthy. So either in business writing or in general communication, credibility is one of the important factors of effective and efficient communication. (McLean, 2010)
Expectation; is the expected messages or results one would receive. Most importantly, in communication it's very vital to meet the expectations of your audience. If you convince and meat expectations of your reader or audience so it mean your communication is efficient and effective. (McLean, 2010)
Though, in the past I have used to write many business related official letters. When it comes to the implementation of these strategies in my writing, I am stating here that I have considered to cover all of the above mentioned strategies in my communications. However, it's really important to meet the expectation of the receivers so sometimes my writings could not meet to the expectations of the readers as expected. Hence, I am trying to focus more on meeting the expectation part of my communications.
For example, in my work or personal communications, I could possibly write a clear, concise, organized, and trustable letters, but when it comes to the expectations part so it's really difficult to make decision that whether you have met the expectations of your audience or not. Because this depends on the qualities of one's anticipations.
References
McLean, S. (2010). Business Communication for Success. The Saylor Foundation. Retrieved from:
http://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/131881/mod_page/content/11/ENGL1103TextbookBusComForSuccess.pdf
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